Trauma Training Tip
It’s the season of the Earth. My favorite season for eating! Mother Earth is providing us with amazing fruits and vegetables – nourishing us and preparing us for the colder and harsher months to come.
In the 5 Element cycle, one of the Earth’s jobs is to “control” the Water Element. The Water Element’s emotion is fear; it Signals Threat. The Earth’s emotion is sympathy; it helps us Digest Gristle and Harvest Lessons – lessons that expand rather than contract our capacity to live in community. When our Earth is working well, we feel grounded, anchored, and nurtured – and are less vulnerable to being triggered or manipulated by fear.
Good thing we have it to dam the Water that may be overflowing our banks!
The current election season is characterized by all parties using fear to manipulate us into voting a certain way. The Democrats tell us to be afraid of the MAGA Republicans and the MAGA Republicans tell us to be afraid of immigrants. We voters tend to choose the fear that resonates with our values. We are much more malleable when we are afraid.
We need to be well nourished, well anchored, and feel solid in our tissues to sort through the fear that’s being sold cheap in the political arena – and make choices that are rooted in the bigger issues underneath this upcoming election. Climate change, community violence, international relations, reproductive freedom, health care, voting rights, economic opportunity – in short, a world that supports this and the next generation to increasingly expand our capacity to live with each other, in community.
We can use this season to help us digest the gristle left over from past experiences – and harvest lessons that expand our lives rather than contract them. It will support us to make choices that make the world a better place to live in now – and to leave for the next generation.
Alaine’s Two Cents
Steadying Through the Storm: Tonifying the Nervous System with Taoist, Ayurvedic, and Alchemical Practices
Thursdays, October 17 and 24, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Eastern
Wednesday, October 30, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Eastern
Thursdays, November 7 and 14, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Eastern
Tao of Trauma grad and Clinical Assistant, Kate Pagliasotti, and her powerhouse colleagues, Alana Layne Greenberg, MA, PhD C and Jo Whitsell, MS, LAc, have created a 5-week long community learning experience designed to weave our collective wisdom through ancestral and modern practices of self-care.
The series, purposefully spanning October 17 – November 14 election season, is being hosted on “A New Possibility’s” platform co-founded by Lorie Eve Dechar & Benjamin Fox. THIS LINK will take you directly to registration for this virtual series as well as give you a free exploratory membership to the A New Possibility network where you can see all the amazing offerings in this community dedicated to Alchemical Healing.
What are the skills that we need to cultivate a deeper tether to our core during times of upheaval? How can we support others while maintaining our grounding? How do we find real steadiness in the turbulence ahead? Together we will investigate what community feels like now, in a time between worlds, as we knit the threads of witnessing and being witnessed into a tighter, more beautiful, and intentional weave. We need each of us to thrive!
Check This Out!
This herbal formula speaks to us about hope and healing in the face of injury and pain. Dit Da Jow, a popular liniment from the Chinese herbal medicine tradition, is an amazing topical for aches and pains, bumps and bruises, sprains and strains.
Wajida Syed, Tao of Trauma Acupuncturist and Herbalist, is offering a free bottle of this fabulous liniment for anyone who donates for the next 7 months (as the liniment ages) to Palestinian, Sudanese, or Congolese folks. More information can be found here.
Here’s a link to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
Here’s a link to the Sudanese Diaspora Network.
Here is a link to Focus Congo.
Send Wajida (wajidasyed@gmail.com) the receipt for your donation with your mailing info and she will send you a bottle of this powerful formula that offers hope and healing in the face of injury and pain.
I’ve sent my donation and encourage you to do the same!
Clinical Curiosity
Where is your clinical curiosity carrying you?
Send me a question or two and I will explore them with readers in this corner next month.
Q: My patient is a Veteran of the war in Afghanistan. She is also a survivor of significant childhood abuse – her father was a violent alcoholic, both parents neglected her needs for nurturance of all types — food as well as hugs and cuddles. I could tell you stories! She has had 3 husbands, each one abusive and demanding. She has a hard time asking for or receiving care for herself. She has terrific and chronic pain, is obese and has western diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and migraine headaches. I feel hopeless about how to help her dig out from what feels overwhelming to me. I am an acupuncturist.
A: So glad she has you! Many survivors of childhood trauma are drawn to professions that offer the comfort of structure and clear lines of authority – like the military, the police, and the fire departments.
You will think you are treating their presenting complaint, and suddenly developmental trauma shows up as the underlying impulse for all that dysregulation. Her early trauma compromised her capacity to deal with her war trauma. It sounds like she has what I would call “chronic multi-symptom illness” – arising out of profound dysregulation in her autonomic nervous system. There’s a lot of “gristle” in there, waiting to be digested!
So – how to find “the issues in her tissues”? Where and how to focus when there is so much going on?
There are 3 primary touch approaches to support restoring balance and regulation in survivors of developmental trauma: the Kidney/Adrenal hold; the Viscera; and the Brain Stem.
Many of her symptoms are pointing towards the Earth as a key player in her trauma physiology, leading me to want to bring gentle and attuned presence to her viscera, especially her Stomach and Spleen – the organs of the Earth element. I would start over her Stomach and see what wakes up. Help her track her enteroception – her awareness of sensations, images, emotions that may be hidden away in these tissues.
She may experience peristalsis in her organs of digestion – when we feel threatened, we don’t digest – so this would be a wonderful statement of transformation her body is making about its capacity to receive and make use of nourishment – both from food and from your presence. Put the spirit of “support” in your hand when you touch her. That will create greater coherence between the location of your touch, and the energy that her system is longing for.
She has likely accumulated what Chinese medicine calls “pernicious damp.” Instead of digesting food, it remains untransformed and accumulates as dampness – manifesting as excess weight, especially around her middle. You may want to use some acupuncture points to transform and move dampness and cultivate Qi while you are bringing your thoughtful supportive hand to her Stomach – and perhaps her Spleen. Her excess damp may also leave her feeling thick and dense in her mind and challenged to make healthy choices in relationships and life.
Love to hear how she does. I think both she and you will witness some beautiful transformation of long held patterns with this approach.